What is freedom?

ongoing exhibition march to freedom The Delhi Art Gallery (DAG) ventured into the dark corridors of colonialism to explore the idea of ​​independence. In doing so, it depicts India’s development through visual elements and textual analysis of the country as well as the socio-cultural and economic landscape of South-Asia. Although historian Mrinalini Venkateswaran curates the exhibition – a collection of prints, drawings, film posters, sculptures, drawings and sculptures – with careful attention to its narrative, she deliberately leaves its title open to audience interpretation. “Is it a statement of fact, an exhortation toward a goal within vision, or an idealistic aspiration? I leave it to you to decide,” she writes in the exhibition’s introductory note. Technically, the exhibition is detailed in all three contexts.

The scenes are structured around eight themes – the fight for independence, the traffic of trade, see India, reclaiming the past, showcasing India, from colonial to national, shaping the nation and independence – each of which is a related Supplemented by essay. The first volume engages with a series of conflicts, the most compelling of which is the Thomas J. Barker (engraved by Charles G. Lewis) painting The Relief of Lucknow and the Triumphant Meeting of Havelock, Outram, in Sir Colin Campbell, November 1857. It commemorates 1857 when the siege of the British Residency at Lucknow was lifted by a section of rebel Company soldiers. Swedish artist Agron Lundgren was in India during 1857, covering Lucknow ‘live’ through hundreds of quick sketches. Thomas Jones Barker used them to create the painting on which the print is based. While most of the prints in this volume look at India’s struggle with its colonists from a European point of view, there are a few paintings by RK Kelkar and an unknown artist that spotlight Nanasaheb Peshwa and Mangal Singh Pandey. This volume is accompanied by an essay by historian Maruna Murmu. She discusses the conflicts between the colonial authorities and the Adivasis, Dalits and tribes of the North-East, engaging them in the larger nationalist struggle and story.

Talking about the themes, Mrinalini shares, “I came up with the themes through the database of DAG collections. I developed them keeping in mind the vast body of scholarship on modern South Asian history. Although it has been conceived to celebrate and commemorate the 75th anniversary of India’s independence, the exhibition is designed to do more.” She says the challenge was to create a coherent narrative that was not the same as most. People can get acquainted through their history school books.

The second section, Traffic of Trade, traces India’s trade relations with other countries through sea routes. The paintings and prints in this section also look at the business aspect through a European lens, depicting maps, sea scenes, paintings of Indian merchants, accountants and even their wives. Charles Walters d’Oyly’s painting of a boat laden with goods and people on the beach may be a general reflection of the trade of those days, but it has an interesting connection with the art history of India. The artist was the nephew of Charles D’Oly, a company servant and artist based in Dhaka and Patna, who founded a local art society with like-minded friends and imported a lithographic press by sea to Patna by river. so that they could print their pictures. This volume contains two prints by Henry Singleton titled British Plenty and Scarcity in India that date back to the 1790s. The visuals are complemented by essays by Sujit Sivasundaram, Professor of World History at the University of Cambridge and Ashiq Ahmed Iqbal, Assistant Professor of History at Creya University, India. While Sivasundaram displays the links and overlaps between networks of business, science and political thought, Iqbal tackles that quintessentially secret theme – the railways, see India in the third volume.

NR Sardesai, Lahore Gate, Red Fort, Delhi, 1929

Ashish Anand, CEO and MD of DAG, says that in the 18th and 19th centuries, English artists attempted to paint the buildings and landscapes they encountered as grand ruins and empty people. “They give the impression of an ancient and great India that was diminished by their time; available for the British and others to occupy. We know now (and Indian audiences knew then) that what we see here is Actually he was not,” he added.

The other five volumes of the exhibition, decorated with essays by Lakshmi Subramaniam, Pushkar Sohoni, Sumati Ramaswamy and Aparna Vaidik, share India’s later journey through its independence. The last section shows the artwork of Chittaprasad, who produced his most important work in the critical years before India’s independence. “DAG had the privilege of acquiring his studio in 1999, even as the then Chief Minister of West Bengal Jyoti Basu wanted to acquire it for the Government of West Bengal.”

This section also shows photographs of Gandhi clicked by French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. “Many people around the world and in India learned of Gandhi’s assassination through photographs of Henry, who was in India to take photographs of our newly independent country. He met Gandhiji and died on 30 January 1948 in his last Took pictures of him a few moments before he left for the prayer meeting. And so he was there to take these pictures of a nation in shock and grief over the murder of his father. There is power in his pictures because they are intimate, and us They show the personality of the people, or the mood around them,” says Ashish.

Describing it as the only comprehensive collection of Henry’s photographs on Gandhi existing in India, Ashish shares that “only after chasing the collection for years, we were able to get them”.

The works are being exhibited at Bikaner House in Delhi till 29 October.